A. Field of Invention
The present invention pertains to lights that can be worn on a user's head to provide illumination in an area of work, and, more particularly, to a headlight for surgeons, dentists or other medical personnel or craftsmen. The light uses two independent lamp housings working cooperatively to converge light beams at a predetermined distance from the LED light sources.
It is essential in certain medical procedures that the physician, surgeon, or Dentist has his or her hands free for manipulating various surgical diagnostic or therapeutic instruments. At the same time, the particular part of the patient's body that the physician or surgeon is treating must be adequately illuminated. For these purposes, doctors and surgeons have heretofore utilized surgical head lights, some of which require the user to remain attached by via fiber optics to a free-standing light source, and/or to a power outlet or an energy source.
Battery powered head-mounted lamps utilizing an incandescent lamp as a light have also been used. Typically, the high power consumption, relatively low light output, high weight, and short battery life of each device of the prior art have made their use difficult, uncomfortable, or otherwise unsatisfactory.
Even with such configurations, however, the amount of light illuminating upon the work area can be inadequate. There have been attempts to increase the light pinching upon the work area by utilizing xenon or halide lamps, which require high power and have a relatively short bulb life and generate substantial amounts of heat.
Some of the problems associated with such xenon and halide lights may be overcome by utilizing light-emitting diodes (LEDs).
Some prior art apparatus have used relatively high-powered LEDs to generate sufficient light output. Such LEDs typically generate so much heat that a heat sink is required; heretofore the prior art has not been able to satisfy the repairment of a heat sink or cooling system for LED light generation.
B. Discussion of the Related Art
Several attempts to solve the problems described herein above have been made in the prior art. For example, published U.S. Pat. No. 6,055,444, published Jun. 2, 2005, and issued as a patent on Oct. 18, 2005 for Surgical Headlight by Suhil Gupta, teaches a head-mounted lamp assembly with at least two LEDs mounted side by side and focused utilizing a rear reflector. Such rear reflector use greatly diminishes the efficiency of the projection of the light generated by the LEDs and thus is unsatisfactory for providing a high intensity, focused light beam of the apparatus of the present invention.
U.S. Pat. No. 7,108,400 entitled Light Source Unit and Projector, by inventor Shuhei Yamada and Takeshi Seto, teaches the use of a LED light source for illumination of high luminants, which includes a cooling system for the illumination of high ruminants, which generates substantial heat. This design utilizes two liquid heat source absorbers and is very complex and is much more difficult to implement than that cooling system taught by the present invention.
U.S. Published Patent Application No. 2005/0243539 teaches a cooled light emitting apparatus comprising a light source including a close-packed array of light emitting diodes and a cooling system for cooling the light source. The cooling system is a thermoelectric cooling device in the form of a peltier device connected by a heat spreader to the light source and a heat exchange system for removing heat from the peltier device. The heat exchange system utilizes a liquid coolant to cool the peltier device in this instance the invention utilizes a heat pipe configuration or arrangement, and this is far less satisfactory than the liquid cooling system taught by the present invention.